


Not so Welcome Home

by boredomsMuse



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: ALL OF IT, Angst, Iverson especially is a dick, Langst, M/M, Manipulation, Mentions of some really gorey deaths, School Shootings, Suicide, and other dark details, is also invovled, shangst, so be warned of that, that include car crashes, the garrison is not a family friendly company
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-28
Updated: 2017-06-28
Packaged: 2018-11-20 01:25:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11325768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boredomsMuse/pseuds/boredomsMuse
Summary: Upon returning to Earth, Lance finds himself completely alone and legally barred from asking for help.Upon returning to Earth, Shiro finds himself completely alone and legally barred from hearing what's going on right beneath his nose.Together, maybe they can change all that.





	Not so Welcome Home

**Author's Note:**

> Blame the Discord. 
> 
> Please read the warnings, there's some graphic death stuff in here including suicide references.

“Lance McClain.”

 

The named boy leaned back in his uncomfortable metal chair and looked every bit nonchalant that he wasn’t.  “Iverson.”  He said, causally.  “You know, after how you treated Shiro, I really should have known you were into this.”  The boy mocked, pulling at his hands, cuffed behind his back and attached to the chair.

 

“After everything your family did, I should have known you’d be a problem eventually.”  Iverson countered.  He dropped a heavy folder onto the table between them and sat down across from the teen.

 

“And what’s in that, blank paper?  If you’re trying to scare me it’s not working.”  Lance rolled his eyes.  “’Cause like, I literally defeated the universes most evil overlords.  Compared to them, you’re not even small fry.”

 

“Your alien friends seemed scared enough when we ran them off the planet.”  Iverson reminded.

 

“You ambushed us.”  Lance glared.

 

“You’re lucky we let you land at all.  Next time that ship’s in range it’s being shot down.”  The commander threatened.  Lance clenched his fist behind the chair.  He hoped Allura and Coran knew better than to return to Earth.  “But that’s not what this is about.”  Iverson said, returning Lance’s attention to the thick folder.  “This is your file.”

 

“Oh sure.  I know I wasn’t a model student, but unless you typed everything in size 32, double spaced, there’s no way that’s mine.”

 

“It’s collective.”  Lance didn’t like the way Iverson was smirking as he said that.  “A family record, if you will.”

 

“I was the first McClain to go to the Garrison.”  Lance frowned as Iverson’s smirk just grew.

 

“Yes, but your family’s been a thorn in our side for generations.  Thorns we removed, one by one.”  He opened the folder and started placing down photos.  Graphic, uncensored, and gruesome pictures detailing the car crash that had taken his uncle, his aunt, and their 3 year old.  The robbery gone wrong that had claimed his grandparents’ lives.  The psychotic break that had ended his older sister.  His fathers car in the driveway, dated with the day the man left for good.  His aunty on her hospital deathbed.  His other aunt’s shipwrecked boat.  The school shooting that took his younger brother and cousin.  His mother’s suicide. 

 

Lance felt sick.

 

Iverson was still smirking.

 

“When you left Earth, you had very little family left.”  A headshot of him joined the gore on the table, closely followed by his older brother and his little sister.  They’d been separated by the foster care system, but he’d still been talking to them as regularly as possible.  “Diego tried to break into one of our facilities; he didn’t far before he was shot dead.  Your sister, Josie wasn’t it?  She lived with him, so we had to take her out.”  Lance had planned to remain unfazed, no matter what the man did.  That plan had been torn up and abandoned and tears were welling in his eyes as he stared at the picture of Josie’s smiling face.  She was missing her front tooth in the photo.  She’d so excited by that, happily chattering away about how the tooth fairy was going to come and bring her sweets.

 

“What?”  He managed to choke out as he stared.  His thoughts weren’t connecting, his brain refusing to accept this new information and all its connotations. 

 

“It’s a shame really, Diego was a smart kid.  Brat was playing the wrong side though, we needed to control him.  You cost us quite the bargaining chip with that disappearing act.”  Iverson went on, as though Lance wasn’t on the edge of a mental break down.  “This is your solo file Lance.”  Lance looked up to a smaller file, held in Iverson’s hands.  “We have you on a serious account of breaking and entering, destroying government property, and going AWOL.” 

 

“But that’s not right.  We were, we were saving Shiro, and the universe!  No jury would convict me!”  He protested, starring at the man in disbelief.

 

“As I’m sure you can tell, I don’t need a jury.”  Iverson made a grand gesture over the pictures that would surely haunt Lance’s nights forever.  “Your friends are facing very similar charges right now, that Holt bitch,” Lance flinched at the insult toward Pidge, “most of all what with the forging of personal identification.  If so much as one of the three of you refuses my offer I promise it’s going to be a very long, very painful time before you all join the rest of the McClain’s on our death toll.”  Lance tried to choke back a sob as things painfully connected in his head.  He didn’t want it to be true, he wanted to wake up, he wanted this all to be some horrible nightmare.

 

“What do you want?”  He asked, voice heavy with emotion.  There was a glee in Iverson’s eyes, a dark kind of joy he wished he’d never seen.

 

“Simple.”  Another piece of paper was dropped on the table and slide towards Lance, over pictures of his dead family.  “This is a silencing order.  You’re going to read this, sign it, and never speak a word of anything to anyone.  Not about your family, or space.  You even muttered the word ‘galra’ or ‘voltron’ and I’ll have you back in here before you can so much as blink.”  They hadn’t told the Garrison anything about Voltron, how long had Iverson known about the galra?  “Outside that, you’re free to live a normal life.”

 

“Why?”  Lance focused on the words on the silencing order, if only so he didn’t have to look at pictures beneath it.  “Why let me leave?”

 

“It’s in the Garrison’s best interest to keep you in the open, let your off planet ‘friends’ think you’re fine.”  Iverson answered, giving Lance what might be the first straight answer he’d ever gotten from the commander.  “Personally, I don’t want you to sign.  I’ll enjoy wiping your pathetic family from existence.”  He was trying to rile Lance up, the teen could tell.  Just give me a reason, Iverson seemed to be mocking.

 

And he wanted to. 

 

Looking at these photos, his family torn apart by the very institution he’d dreamed of joining.  He wanted to refuse and let them torture him or kill him or whatever it was Iverson had in store.  He wanted to scream that he’d never give into murderers and liars and jerks like them.  If it was only his life on the line he would (or so he told himself, wanting to think himself brave) but Iverson had mentioned Hunk and Pidge sharing his fate.  He couldn’t do that to his friends. 

 

“You’re going to have to uncuff me to sign it.”  He muttered out, sagging in his seat with the weight of a guilty heart.

 

“I’m going to need you to talk a little later McClain.”  Iverson smirked.  Lance was blinking back tears, seeing Josie’s smiling face every time his eyes shut for even a fraction of a second.

 

“I’ll sign the fucking paper.”  

 

“Forget your manners in space Lance?  I’m still your commanding officer.”  He wanted to punch that smug look of the man’s face.

 

“I’ll sign the fucking paper, _sir_.”  He managed through clenched teeth.  Iverson had the audacity to chuckle.  Something clicked and the cuffs fell away.  Iverson held out a pen.  Lance wanted nothing more than to shove the ball point through his gleaming fucking eyes.  Instead he used it to a sign a deal with something worse than the devil.

 

* * *

 

 

Along with the silencing order came a cover story.  One that Lance wanted to rip up the moment he read the first line.

 

“This is bullshit!”  He snapped, throwing the paper down onto the hard concrete floor as he tapped his foot.  The paper fluttered to the ground, very unsatisfying in the way it just seemed to glide despite his anger. 

 

“What choice do we have Lance?”  Pidge sighed, reading over her own.  The three of them were in a small holding cell.  Iverson had said something about keeping them until the Garrison was sure they wouldn’t break the contract.  More likely Iverson just got off on it; Lance thought voicing that was worth the swollen cheek.

 

“We’re going to get kicked out for this.”  Hunk said, his face scrunched up in concern.  The three of them had the same cover story.  Pidge was found out for lying, and so Lance and Hunk had helped her escape the Garrison by going AWOL and partying it up all over the country.  The foster house Hunk and Lance had been living in weren’t going to be happy about it.

 

“We save the universe and this is what we get?”  Lance huffed. 

 

“Lance.”  Hunk hissed, eyes looking around panicked. 

 

“What?  That stupid order doesn’t start until we leave.”  The shorter rolled his eyes.  He’d read the entire contract before signing it, taking his time to make sure he knew it all even if that wasn’t likely to change his decision about signing.

 

“Still, should we really be risking it?”  Hunk mumbled.  “They might like, put us in different cells or something.”

 

“I doubt it.  They need our stories to match up or they’ll have done that already.”  Pidge mumbled.  Hunk and Lance paused a moment, hearing the words she hadn’t said.  Sam and Matt had been with them before the interrogations, now they were god knows where.  According to Pidge they were being kept here, to keep up the illusion of still being dead.  Visiting rights were one of the ‘perks’ of signing away her freedom of speech.

 

“At least you’re going to see your mum again.”  Lance offered.

 

“She’ll be just as mad as yours about this.”  Pidge sighed, putting the paper to her side.

 

“My mum’s never going to know.”  Lance said, choking out a heartbroken laugh.  The images were still so fresh, her wrists spilt so wide she was gone by the time Lance got home from school.  He’d been so mad at her back then, convinced she’d left him just like his dad did.  He’d have to go to her grave, apologize for being so wrong and stupid.  Would the Garrison even let him do that?  Would Iverson decide it counted as him breaking the silencing order?

 

“You’re just going to, what, show up and hope she doesn’t ask?”  Pidge frowned at him but Lance didn’t really hear, too focused on thoughts he didn’t want.

 

“Our uh, Lance and I are orphans.”  Hunk answered her after a moment.  “We were living in a foster house before Volt- uh, you know?”  Was it really a car crash that had killed Hunk’s parents, Lance wondered.  Or had it been orchestrated by the Garrison, like every family member Lance had lost?  God, he hoped not.

 

“But Lance was always talking about his family?”  Pidge frowned, looking over to the blue paladin.  Lance hoped the younger couldn’t see the way he was freaking out on the inside right now.

 

“Sometimes it’s easier to pretend everything’s fine.”  Lance hum joylessly.  “That and I’m delusional, according to my therapist.” 

 

“She didn’t say it like that.”  Hunk frowned.

 

“Might as well have.”  Denial, was how the woman had actually described it.  He’d been too young to accept the truth so he just… hadn’t.  Well, that wasn’t likely to happen again.

 

“So… after all this you guys have to go back to a foster house?”  Pidge asked when a tense silence fell over them.

 

“Until they kick us out for this.”  Hunk sighed, the only one still making an attempt to read the cover story.

 

“I’ll figure something out Hunk.”  Lance promised.  “They won’t kick you out.”  He wasn’t sure either of them believed it.

 

* * *

 

Lance guessed it was a week before he and Hunk were shoved into a black car and dropped off by their foster house, with bags of ‘evidence’ from their trip and no cell phones.  They hadn’t even gotten a chance to say goodbye to Pidge, dragged out of the cell before they were even awake.  Lance wondered if they’d ever see the green paladin again. 

 

“Have you got that plan yet?”  Hunk asked, looking between the house at the end of the street and Lance.  The short boy took a deep breath and nodded. 

 

“Yeah.  We’re going to pretend I kidnapped you.”  He said.

 

“What?!”  Hunk practically shouted, head snapping from the house to Lance.

 

“It’s foolproof.  You’ll go back and talk about how I made you leave the Garrison and dragged you around the country and you got no choice.  You finally got away because I passed out while high or drunk or something.  They never thought highly of me anyway.”  Lance shrugged, like it was no big deal.

 

“Lance, are you crazy?!”  Hunk hissed.  “What if they want me to press charges?”

 

“Tell them you’re too scared or something.”  Lance offered.  “It’ll work.”

 

“You don’t know that.  And how will I ever see you again?!”  The larger man continued to protest.

 

“We’ll figure something out.”  Lance brushed it off.

 

“Where will you go?”  Hunk brought up.  Lance didn’t hesitant to answer.

 

“Diego’s.  I’m older now so it’s not like he’d have to adopt me, you know like he did with Josie?  So I can just crash on the couch.”  That had been why Lance was in the foster house back before Voltron.  His brother was having trouble trying to get custody over him because of his age.  Or at least that’s what he’d been told, since finding out the truth he’d doubted that was the reason.

 

“Are you sure?”  Hunk pressed.  Speaking of the truth, he hadn’t told Hunk or Pidge about it.  Now it was too late.

 

“Yeah man, hurry up and go before someone sees us.”  Lance smiled.  Hunk hesitated another moment before hugging Lance tightly and quickly.  They went their separate ways.

 

Lance turned back towards the city.  He’d ran away once before, convinced his mama was waiting for him, and he’d ended up on the streets for a good few months because of it.  He could do this.  There was a bus stop nearby, the garrison had left them with a little bit of money (they’d wanted Hunk and Lance to say they came back because they were running out of the stuff). 

 

Lance paid for the bus fair, got into the city, and spent the day in the library trying to distract himself from the real world.  He left when it closed, stomach rumbling, and started to just walk.  He’d find somewhere to sleep, as isolated and warm as he could manage.  He settled for a doorstep in still-being-build residential area.   He cuddled up in the door stop and hugged himself tight, trying to ignore the cold.

 

He’d been sitting there for maybe five minutes before all the stress and emotions finally caught up with him and Lance found himself balling his eyes out in front of some fancy house that would probably be empty for months, maybe years.  This isn’t the welcome home he’d wanted.

**Author's Note:**

> Since this never came up in the chapter:  
> Pidge is 17 in this  
> Hunk, Lance, and Keith are 19  
> Shiro is 20
> 
> Lance and Hunk's foster house is meant to look after them until their 21 at the oldest.


End file.
